Spaced Out: Kennedy Space Center

We arrived at the Kennedy Space Center today around 9:30.  This self-supporting (non-tax-supported) facility does an extraordinary job of illustrating the history of the U.S. space program.  It was a day that almost, almost, made Bob want to vote for Newt, just so we could continue our quest as Newt proposes.

We began our tour in the Rocket Garden which displays a variety of rockets, almost all of which began life as ICBM’s ready to do our share of taking the human race to Armageddon but later re-purposed to take man into space.
Next we watched an IMAX movie about the construction of the International Space Station: truly extraordinary! Because it was in 3D, Cathryn found herself reaching out to grab the popcorn and oranges that were floating at her face when the astronauts “dropped” them.

We then boarded a bus to tour the various assembly and launch pad facilities spread over this huge facility.  The photo above is of the Space Center’s most famous building: the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB),  360 feet tall, and it covers a vast area, more than 8 acres.  It’s the largest single story building in the world. If you look at the flag on the upper left, the blue field is as large as a basketball court,  the stars are 6 feet from point to point, each stripe is 8 1/2 feet wide.

Inside the building it looks equally vast.  The Apollo Saturn rockets were the first spacecraft assembled in this building, followed by the Space Shuttles.  One year from now it’s scheduled to be closed for remodeling for future use in assembling the US’s next generation Space Launch System and the Orion space capsule, which is planned to be a deep space system, rather than the near-earth orbit (within 450 miles) that was the space shuttle’s mission.

The space shuttle Discovery was in the VAB being prepared for its final trip to the Smithsonian for exhibition at a facility at Dulles Airport in Washington DC . If you enlarge the lower picture you can see the heat tiles that have caused the program so much trouble and the loss of the Challenger and her crew back in 1986.

We also saw the relocated-for-exhibition Control Room used for the Apollo missions as well as Apollo 11, the vehicle which first took man to the moon.
The visit reminded us of the 1960s and 70s when we were growing up, and the US seemed to have begun a truly historic journey.  It’s sad that we don’t seem to have the same sense today.
After 5 1/2 hours we were “spaced out”.  There was lots more to see, but we just couldn’t absorb any more.  As our first “tourist” activity of the Loop it was a great beginning.